There is now unfolding in a federal court in San Francisco a lawsuit in which several major Hollywood movie studios are suing RealNetworks – a relatively small but successful company that develops and markets Internet communications technology – in an effort to prevent the company from selling a software product that simply enables consumers to copy their DVDs to their personal computers. If the studios are successful in this Goliath-against-David legal action, [Thomas] Edison’s lesson in hard work will have been effectively reduced to, “genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent permission.”

The movie industry is suing to keep RealDVD off the market, claiming it violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In my opinion the DMCA was a bought-and-paid-for law in the first place, requiring computer and other consumer electronics companies to implement hardware controls that keep you from being able to do all kinds of things with digital media. (It’s the law that lets RIAA sue kids and deceased grandmothers.) But, not satisfied with those restrictions, the movie industry is now trying to control technology that is clearly not covered by DMCA. RealDVD lets you copy a DVD onto your computer. You can’t even make a copy of that. It think maybe this is all about the movie industry wanting to force the company to pay them royalties.
I wrote before about copyright protections, “Of course within reason this is necessary and proper.” But that’s within reason, this isn’t. Barr writes, “the sky would not fall on the movie industry were it to back away from its unfortunate legal action against RealDVD.” Amen.